Time for Catholic pedantry! The immaculate conception refers to the conception of Mary herself, free from original sin but still conceived via good old fashioned sex. Mary herself becoming pregnant with Jesus but without taking the d first is the distinct concept of the virgin birth.

Also: I’ve seen a lot of commentary over the years that insinuates that K-Lo is so vocally disapproving of all other women’s sexuality because she is saving herself for Jesus. Turns out, she was saving herself to become Mary, instead.

I don’t think this is quite the right interpretation of K-Lo. K-Lo just chose a certain way to live and is too dumb to understand why other people might choose a different way unless they’re Big Sinners.

You know, it’s interesting. My spouse owns a yoga studio and runs her own website. For a few years, she quite deliberately avoided using GoDaddy because of its ad campaigns, and this was in spite of the fact that it has several advantages over the alternatives. I do wonder sometimes whether the folks running this company know that women might want to use their services too.

Dad looks at our poor wretch of a hero, heading to the prom with only his model good looks and his designer tux and no breaks to catch, and pity-lends him the shiny new Audi for the evening. Brimming with new confidence, the hero marches into prom, approaches the queen from behind and spins her around for a surprise deep kiss. The hero then drives the Audi home with a black eye from the prom king and the knowledge that he’ll never be a friendzoned nice guy pussbag again. “Be brave: Audi.”

I’m pretty confused as to why they felt it was necessary to go the route they did instead of something a bit sweeter (that could still end with dude getting punched).

Also, when did “friend zone” become associated with creepiness? It’s been around since the mid-90s (from Chris Rock’s tectonically influential special “Bring the Pain”), and suddenly it’s some PUA shit or something? It’s not even gendered–I’m pretty sure it happens to like 90% of humans at least once!

Apart from the bothersome fact that some straight men can’t fathom a relationship with a woman that doesn’t explicitly or implicitly involve sex or flirtation, thereby incapable of conceiving of an actual friendship and thus requiring some special category like “friend zone,” the phrase became associated with douchebag creepiness when resentful, self-pitying men began to turn the concept into some terrible crime women commit against when they don’t put out enough.

“Friend zone” is really frequently associated with the concept that if you treat women with respect and restraint and don’t shove your manful virility in their faces, you will be permanently deprived of access to sex. It’s certainly always been associated with the idea that women either see men as potential sex partners or friends, never to change their minds.

I don’t think the situation where you’re interested in sex with someone who’s only interested in friendship is itself a bad thing to discuss, but “friend zone” is pretty damaged goods at this point.

Thank God. Most of the people I saw were saying somewhat positive things about that Audi ad, or at least not ripping on it for its pro-sexual-assualt argument. I was actually starting to think I was overreacting to it.

But now that I see J-Pod defending the ad, I feel more confident in my view that it was loathesome.

Except that it’s about a women demonstrating her right to be romantically autonomous and that being with one guy doesn’t men he owns her forever.

I mean, yeah, there’s kind of a conservative side to it. But ultimately it’s about a lady deciding what she wants to do with her lady parts on her own terms, and no matter what other parts of it might seem conservative, that part there will render it anathema to them.

Agreed. Although I wonder how much of my reaction to it is entirely dependent on his voice. I almost feel like Harvey could have read the ingredients to Rice Krispies and I would have felt like he was saying something really profound and important.

In this neck of the woods we were all “WTF are they selling, a megachurch? Tractors? A weird 1940s version of farming that doesn’t really exist anymore? ArcherDanielsMidland stock?” and then when they got to the truck everybody said “oh, that was a really fucking stupid commercial” and I added “and Paul Harvey is horrible.”

But I never could stand Paul Harvey, even when he was “popular” so there’s that.

Hated Paul Harvey so very, very much. I’d worked in radio for a few years doing news reading at various small-town stations, and it just bugged the hell out of me when his broadcasts would consist of long-debunked urban folklore, interspersed with snarls about brown people. I celebrated very happily when he died.

One of the very first times I heard a Paul Harvey monologue he was telling a story about a guy who was in a dumptruck that got struck by lightning, during which he said, “Rubber tires no longer protect us since we started putting steel belts in them,” which isn’t even wrong. It’s just fucking stupid.

Rubber tires never protected anyone from lightning. D’you think a bolt of electricity that’s capable of jumping half a mile is going to balk at the last foot ’cause there’s a rubber tire nearby? A car–or a truck cab–is made of steel, which is conductive and forms a Faraday cage. (Boston’s Museum of Science has a great demo of one in their Hall of Electricity, by the way.) But Paul Harvey was sure God was looking out for this poor schlub. Rubber tires. Fucking moron. Good riddance.

That was pretty much my reaction too. Clearly the commercial was effective to a point; it was memorable, with effective imagery, etc. But the stuff was, in my view, way over the top. The sentimentality was so thick that it just felt manipulative. And man, the payoff aggravated me. Indeed, the commercial explicitly acknowledged that it’s not selling trucks to actual farmers, but to the “farmer in all of us.” Using the idealized images of the working farmer to get a bunch of exurban dudes to identify with farming (by buying pickup trucks they don’t actually need, of course!) just felt a few steps beyond the normal cynical and sentimental crap we usually see.

Except the ad is fundamentally dishonest. American farming doesn’t look like that anymore except for the post-hippie, organic, back to quality foods movement and they’re all DFHs so you can’t show them.

Most of the farmers I know buy their pickup trucks used, usually from some urban dude that “never took it off-road”. That’s if they need a truck at all. Used DHS vans seem to be popular too. High mileage, but they’ve been well maintained and they’re never more than three years old.

Following New York’s September 11th Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill was not here to remind us that we didn’t come this far because we are made of sugar candy. So, we mustered our humanity, we gave old pals a pass. Even though men and women from Saudi Arabia were largely responsible for the devastation of New York, Pennsylvania, and our Pentagon, we called Saudi Arabians our partners against terrorism and we sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq – kept our best weapons in their silos. Even now we stand their dying, daring to do nothing decisive because we declared ourselves to be better than our terrorist enemies. More moral. More civilized. Our image is at stake, we insist.

We didn’t come this far because we’re made of sugar candy. Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and across this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. That was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever.

And we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves. So it goes with most great nation-states, which–feeling guilty about their savage pasts–eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy.

Ms. Lopez, I hate to question your expertise but a quick scan of the internet appears to show that your distaste for combinations involving mothers and sex is not quite unanimously shared by the rest of society.

Has K-Lo ever seen Bouncy before? She always wears sexy, leg-baring outfits. I mean, she’s a beautiful young entertainer. (Although I’d be perfectly cool with her not trading on her sexuality and good looks. I kinda don’t give a shit either way.)

What century is K-Lo living in again? I want to get angry, but sometimes she just makes me…sad.